Posts by Sgt_Oddball

UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful

Banning is all well and good...

But the current governments ability to do this so far leaves so much to be desired as to wondering why they bothered...

What they really need, is a central service for identifying denizens of the internet in a secure, centrally controlled way that's actually in the interests of the citizens and not some 3rd party service (using flawed systems prone to being faked and breached).

That there is no centralised system that can be trusted by the government says alot.

If only there was something automatically assigned to every legal citizen, some sort of Identification document able to do zero trust authentication, quick revocation (in case it's lost/stolen) but rewards citizens for actually using it (this encouraging carrying, frequent usage). If only... (And yes, other countries have managed this one, Malaysia for example with their MyKard)

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

Re: Well of course...

If it's not beer, they should be seeing a doctor with the head on the golden liquid...

Most chatbots will help plan school shootings and other violence, study shows

I suppose what might be better...

Is the chat bot giving instead plausible but off the mark advice on how to commit acts of violence (such as using plaster instead of flour for an explosive for example, using cardboard rather than a pipe etc etc).

Or maybe have them give some advice that immediately gets them on a watchlist (though that does then require squishy humans to actually stop scratching their arses and eating doughnuts but you can only do so much)...

So many possibilities to distract away from bad intentions...

Drunk icon because slightly unhinged ramblings required.

Say goodbye to budget PCs and smartphones – memory is too expensive now

Re: I've got some ideas

Speed 1 or 2 and with or without the hammer action? Enquiring minds and all that..

Re: I've got some ideas

Yep, I'm pretty sure there'd be plenty of people who'd want to line up to watch you doing the deed...

Mines the one with the hand drill in the pocket and the bloody napkin in the other. I'll see myself out.

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

We got forced to have windows machines for all

Everyone has one, usually a Lenovo but sometimes an M$ surface.

And then some of us got macs... It's used to be because it was outside the reach of the corporate security overlords, these days... It's because they're still more open than the M$ machines to allow us to actually do our jobs (even with WSL we often find dependencies blocked for inane reasons or ports locked because... Well just because) and we can at least justify that they'll last us longer than a windows machine so there's always that.

RondoDox botnet fires 'exploit shotgun' at nearly every router and internet-connected home device

Re: If You Don't Patch Your Devices/Software, You're Begging For It

Armley mill in Leeds has the whole set too (along with a further section on cinema, since Bradford got the Media museum rather than the birthplace of moving pictures...*grumble, grumble*)

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

Re: "English language keyboard license"

Yeah, it caught a lot of people when they found out Denial isn't in Egypt...

Curious tale of two HR tech unicorns, alleged espionage, and claims of a spy hiding in a bathroom

Re: A.V.A.

What? Even Keyser Söze?

Google’s broadband balloon laser comms tech floated out as independent company

So what they're really saying...

Is that they've dropped the floaters and instead are laser focused on point to point transmissions.

I wonder what sort of optical correction they'll be adding so it doesn't have a shaky start?

Fine. I'm going. Mines the one with the folding telescope in the pocket.

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

In my day...

We just added a Doc/docx and pdf (if we could get away with charging extra) parse and a fuzzy match to a HR CRM system.

There's just so much wheel reinvention going on where the keyword of AI get added as if it somehow makes it better than everything else that's gone before because it allows the users to be even more brain-dead than before.

And don't even get me started on Microservices Devs...

CISA: We didn't fire red teams, we just unhired a bunch of them

Re: Purgatory

We'll ignore him with a firm 'tut' and the knowledge that whilst yes, Europe and the UK needed to put more into keeping themselves safe there are ways and means of doing that without hideously offending some of your best customers.

Re: PR for the Win!!!

"Step up to red alert!"

"Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb..."

Google slips built-in terminal, Debian Linux VM into Android 15 March feature drop

This sounds suspiciously close...

To what one my app dev guys was looking for (he's one of the few people in the office willing to having a weirder Android device Vs everyone else just getting an iPhone) the other day.

He was after a Linux distro to run on his pixel (he has to settle for the pixel as staff options removed the nothing phone and before they added the TCL nextpaper which got him all excited such is life) purely so he could a decent terminal in a VM.

Being able to have a terminal is a boon for those of us who have to test kit, with terminal scripts being a huge time saver for switching configs between tests and actually trying to use the damn thing as a phone.

Europe's largest council kept auditors in the dark on Oracle rollout fiasco for 10 months

Having worked in a UK based software house

I can wholeheartedly agree. We tried to get council contracts from time to time but the sheer effort involved in finding the tender requests and stupid requirements/hoops to jump through to prove that yes, we were capable of providing a simple CRM package for one sports centre got ludicrous to the point I was sure the requirements were written by the tender winners just so only they could take the contract.

Smaller companies who can't afford to take councillors out for steak dinners every other week don't stand a chance for these things (despite being more flexible and able to bend over backwards to accommodate the effective, cost efficient implementation of their own package, safe in the knowledge that other councils will crawl over broken glass to get it once a package is proven good).

Apple solves broken news alerts by turning off the AI

Re: Ai has a place...

Welp wrong on all counts for job description (mainly because systems round these parts are rarely let out of the small office with the padded walls....)

Ai has a place...

I just wish big tech firms would listen to us telling it where that place is rather than trying to shoehorn it into every feature, facet and function as an excuse to do something with all the data they've hoover up.

(Anyone promoting AI should be required by law to explain the difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom without resorting to a dictionary or online searches).

Parker Solar Probe sends a "Still Alive" tone back to Earth

I give it 30 years...

Before we're trying to find a way of getting a satellite close enough to fly through a coronal loop...

Still this is an awesome achievement of having it get that close and not become one with the infinite leaving a million mile long trail of magic smoke.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

I wonder....

If this would explain why I no longer have Bluetooth on my motherboard? Maybe a rollback is required.

Fission impossible? Meta wants up to 4GW of American atomic power for AI

Re: There''s SMRs, and then there's SMRs

The last thing we need with Nuclear is a company that's 'disruptive' with a fix fast mentality - something's are better when they never break in the first place.

Framework laptops get modular makeover with RISC-V main board

Re: Thinkpad keyboard...

Mines currently down for the count as batteries have become... Problematic to acquire and despite best efforts of getting a stupidly big PSU (wattage wise) from the bin'o doom at work it's not coming back round. Which is a shame as it was great for doddling on as the graphics tablet side always worked great.

I'd seen another project previously to put new internals in but missed out on getting one at the time.

Thinkpad keyboard...

With a modern CPU?

Be still my beating heart (I personally prefer the X200T keyboard, but the X220's isn't too bad).

I'd be more excited by that than having RISC-V...

Unless... AmigaOS maybe? (Sudden pondering on the bizarre possibility of ThinkPad keyboard, modern inputs/screens etc and AmigaOS.. in a portable form factor)

Wanted. Top infosec pros willing to defend Britain on shabby salaries

Re: I take it

Whippets? Great pets, very loyal and can be trained to act like your second shadow.. just make sure they don't see the local moggies. Gets awkward explaining why you had to pick bits of tiddles from your dogs teeth.

I take it

You've not been to Liverpool recently? The city is beacon of Victorian high rises, boast many a watering hole and even had friendly policeman willing to politely ignore a very impressed Yorkshireman somewhat over enjoying himself in the place.

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Bless..

Sounds like my old boss. He used to swear... A lot... Only the once directly at me (he was also an ex town crier so most of the office floor heard him) but often on group calls would occasionally be picked up on other live mics muttering after muting himself.

On the flip side, he trusted his Devs and backed me up rather than throw me under the bus in my first work production f-up.

Still the best person I've ever had the honour of working under.

(Megaphone icon because he didn't need one)

Uncle Sam explores satellites that can create propellant out of thin air

Hold up..

As a thought if having the particles stick to the back adding drag, wouldn't the opposite also be possible? Attract the particles in the front. Surely that'd add a small (but non-zero) pull effect to work against the drag?

Nikola founder faces ranch forfeiture following fraud conviction

Re: The problem is too many pessimists insisting the glass is half empty.

But the thing is.... It is possible to do. On a shoe string budget no less without getting a bunch of gullible fools investors by building the sort of thing a customer wants. Eddison Motors having done just that, they've done a retro conversion, then a new build prototype (it goes, it tows, it's in heavy testing now with warts and all being recorded because you can learn from failures), they're making money building portable lighting rigs and actively engaging with a small number of customers to work on further concepts once the prototype has proven itself (by concepts we're not talking pure haulage trucks, but utility vehicles - cement mixers, logging trucks, bower trucks etc etc).

They've also built it as a diesel electric - which at the end of the day the generator can run any fuel you like and is more there to ensure it can always move.

Veteran editors Notepad++ and Geany hit milestone versions

Re: Notepad++ FTW

Real devs do it in Vim....

Mine the big great coat. I'll see myself out.

OSIRIS-REx successfully delivers NASA's first asteroid sample

Re: 11mph (18km/h)

No, I'm not having that at all...

The true conversion should be 0.0002%mvsv (Maximum Velocity of a Sheep in a Vacuum).

I mean what's the point of a standards bureau if no one sticks to the correct standards?

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

That's a decent enough home office setup..

Though I'd look at a better cart for the Pro-ject (I'm partial to AT-115 carts on free vintage dual I've got in my home office).

New York City latest to sue Hyundai and Kia claiming their cars are too easy to steal

Re: The only option is....

Which is a nice thought until they all get the same idea and follow suit. Thus removing the choice (see mobile phones and integrated batteries, removal of headphone jacks, making them difficult to repair but fragile enough etc) from the consumer anyway.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

Re: Tempt fate

Does that mean someone has to dial the emergency services?

So it's... 0118 999 881 999 119 725..........3

Building your own private 5G is as easy as Wi-Fi

Re: I've seen a mobile version of this in the flesh.

The contractor in question works in partnership with a rather large network in the UK... And spun the tech off their highly mobile, mobile cell towers (runs out the back of a L200 pickup so they can drive it up a mountain if need be).

So licencing of the airwaves isn't a problem for them. I was disappointed though the the SDR kit was some off-the-shelf Dell rack mount servers. All solid-state drives though so less issues with vibration.

I've seen a mobile version of this in the flesh.

Really good idea for managing devices over a wide area but not so large than regular networks would be preferable.

A good example was for music festivals, hand all vendors their own sims so they can accept card payments on a dedicated network, run video/audio over dedicated networks. All on some that won't be completely borked because of abit of rain or having the APs saturated because different vendors are trying to use WiFi for other none transaction data.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

Re: Command.com

5¾"? I thought they were 5¼"? and besides, they weren't the first. The first floppies came on 8".

There was also lots of other bizarre formats and sizes, even on the same size disk on occasion (SD/DD/HD 3½" diskettes anyone?)

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

Re: Automation needed

Generally for such boxes you make sure it's in a room that does not see a cleaning lady(or man, such things do exist). Secondly, the box might come up just fine but that doesn't mean the attached servers will automatically play nice, seeing the boxen mit blinkenliten immediately and carrying on their merry way.

Sometimes, you have to restart things in a specific order. Usually the order is passed down in arcane rites by grey beards in locations where the sun dare not shine. Sometimes you get lucky and just have to remind the servers that things exist again.

I've been there a few times, even more fun having UPS's ripple start only to have one release the arcane smoke thus causing further embuggerance after a lengthy power outage.

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

So not a developer then? The fun and games moving from Intel macs to Arm macs has been..... Interesting what with getting installers to work, rosetta to behave other misc stuff.

That said, fine once done and I'm still shocked at being able to work for a day in the office without worrying about bringing my charger with me.

How the Internet Archive faces potential destruction at the hands of Big Four publishers

Re: For those neigh saying..

Well... They are braying, snorting and stamping their feet...

If the (horse) shoe fits...........

Mines the barbour jacket with the thesaurus in the pocket.

For those neigh saying..

What about works that are out of print? Or rare versions with forwards/notes by interested parties?

Or for literature that is no longer in fashion but culturally relivent, or even heaven forbid has been altered in new editions in some meaningful way because the contents are no longer agreeable?

What of those from closed publishers? Whilst, yes... I will admit there is a certain amount of overreach, the sheer breadth of archived material is valuable in of itself especially when other archives aren't perfect (such as the service manual for a 20 year old CRT I own. Pdf versions OCD scanned the docs and used a random not available anywhere font for the parts list. IA had an actual scanned copy - no missing text).

Compromise and nuance should be agreed rather than tearing it all down. Especially things like the way back machine.

Why our solar-storm sats corrode – and probably not what you expected

In space....

No one can hear you steam...

Mines the one with the Nostromo patch...

Wow, so they actually let AI fly an F-16 fighter jet

Closer and closer each day...

We're getting to actually having an ACE Combat game become a reality... We've had shooting balloons, shooting satellites, ghost of ***** for an ace pilot, short range ground to air missile runs, and now we've got robot/AI controlled planes...

Life imitates art in weird ways sometimes.

(and yes I know I know it's a weird series but the plots in some can be really fun - AC:5 is a notible example as is AC:7 - we don't talk about 6..... Or Assault Horizon. Though that's drawing parallels as well)

Ring system discovered around dwarf planet Quaoar leaves astronomers puzzled

Properly married to their work..

These astronomers. They even put a ring on it.....

Mines the one with the towel in the pocket, I'll see myself out.

Cloudflare engineer broke rules – and a customer's website – with traffic throttle

They've at least done the right thing...

Own the issue, admitted it was human error due to procedural omissions and stated they'll make changes to remedy it from happening again in the same manner. They haven't said the fix was completely wrong, but that how it was applied, was.

If anything this actually gives some confidence in them and right now seeing the engineer punished wouldn't be worthwhile. If anything I'd say said engineer is now more qualified than any other to address similar incidents going forwards.

All in all, well done Cloudflare for putting this out there.

Teacher icon because every day is a school day.

Japan's NTT Docomo uses invisibility cloak tech to fix 5G reception

So for existing buildings...

Replace all the glass right? Got it.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Re: Never mind commercial viability...

For fuel, its on hydrogen... As the article mentions.. Several times.

At any rate it looks to be easier to deploy than the current mobile cell towers (basically a flatbed truck with a bunch of server racks, a radio mast, a generator and four wheel drive to go up the side of a mountain).

I wonder if the private cell network system could also be run through this?

NASA Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission ends after last data recorder fails

In fairness...

To those complaining they over-engineer, it's difficult to build a piece of equipment to last until the day the warranty expires when you're only building one or two of the type.

Now, if there was a mass produced, off-the-shelf, multi-config satellite that's cheap to launch....

Then yes. But when running a team for 30 years still costs less than building and launching it then overeengineering it is.

Meanwhile, in Japan, pet fish run up credit card bill on Nintendo Switch

Re: Gambling

Look there's a time and a plaice for that sort of thing...

Space mining startup prepping to launch 'demo' refinery... this April

Re: How does this work?

Look, can we not have mining vessels in space using reactors? I mean, we all know what happens when you scale this up and end up having a Cadmium II leak caused by bad welds from a maintenance engineer.

No good will come off this I tell you.

Mines the leather one with the Ace Rimmer fan club patch...

India uses emergency powers to order takedown of BBC documentary

Re: Unforgivable!

Admittedly yes. Finding Russian Cyrillic direct translations isn't something I spend much on. Probably should look at the 60's USSR children's books I've knocking around and see if it's in there.

Ukraine slides closer to NATO with buckets of experience fending off Moscow's cyberattacks

Re: Centre of Excellence

I always wondered if there was ever an off-centre of excellence, personally I'd like to be considered to join a centre-left of excellence. Top-right feels too strict....

Mines with the. Self-help book "how to lose friends and alienate people", I'll see myself out.